How do you like that? Dow off 43 points on Friday. No bounce back from the big loss on Thursday. And gold keeps going up. It now seems to be aiming for $1,400 an ounce. Remember the sentiment at the end of 2013? Gold was sure to go down. Everybody said so. Instead, gold and gold mining stocks have done quite well, thank you. The big gold ETF, GLD, is up over 14% so far in 2014. And the big gold miners ETF, GDX, is up 31%. US stocks, meanwhile, are vulnerable. Want to make a simple trade?

Dow down hard – 231 points. Gold flat. What’s behind the big drop in equities? Our colleague Chris Hunter reckons it’s the two “C”s – China and Crimea. These two hotspots are giving investors the jitters. Meanwhile, our friends over at Agora Financial gave us a fright. They pointed to an article in the Wall Street Journal: “Nation’s Power Grid Vulnerable to Sabotage.” A few low-tech saboteurs could put the nation in the dark for 18 months, says the WSJ.

Nothing to report from Wall Street. Dow down a little yesterday. Gold up a little. The most telling stories are coming from the world economy, not its manipulated markets. The price of copper is collapsing. The Baltic Dry Index is dragging along the bottom. Seven years after the start of the debt crisis the global economy is still struggling. Hedge-fund-turned-family-office-manger George Soros says Europe could be in for a 25-year slump.

Dow down 67. Gold flat. We turn to other things. You know our position on foreign affairs: We think there shouldn’t be any. But sometimes the news takes our breath away. Here with a brief summary of the situation in Crimea… In 1954, Soviet head of state Nikita Kruschev – who was half-Ukrainian and grew up along what is now the Russian-Ukrainian border – gave Crimea to Ukraine. But the population of Crimea is mostly Russian-speaking and has had a strong Russian presence for more than 200 years. This includes an important Russian naval base.